A few months ago, when we exposed that so-called humane groups, including the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), kept silent while language was inserted into in the new Pennsylvania anti-cruelty statute that made pigeon shoots in that state legal, HSUS, trying to defend itself, sent out an email that claimed the following:

"We have stopped shoots in California, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas -- and most recently secured an attorney general's opinion in Maryland that will prevent live pigeon shoots from occurring there.”

As we exposed last week, pigeon shoots are indeed still happening in Maryland, so that claim was false.We've also discovered an active pigeon shoot location in North Carolina, so that too was false. As Prescott's claims were absolutely wrong for those two states, we became very concerned that HSUS was misleading the public about the other states as well.

While HSUS took credit for stopping pigeon shoots in Maryland, SHARK went undercover and filmed a large burn pit filled with pigeons used in a pigeon shoot in Maryland

SHARK President Steve Hindi wrote to HSUS President Wayne Pacelle regarding their mistaken claims, and that we wanted to review all the information they had on shoots that they claimed to have stopped. Considering how horribly wrong HSUS has been on the pigeon shoot issue lately, this was a fair request. In the meantime, SHARK is pouring a great deal of resources and time into actually fighting against these disgusting shoots.

A worker firing at pigeons right in front of our investigator at Schrader's Outdoors, the Maryland pigeon shoot site. Once again, SHARK goes where others won't and gets the evidence that is needed

We received an email from Wayne that contained the letter from the Maryland Office of Attorney General stating that pigeon shoots were illegal, though he added that they were not aware where the pigeon shoots occur. That was strange as HSUS certainly did know that Schrader's Outdoors was where they were holding pigeon shoots. It also raises question about Heidi Prescott's claims that they got this letter to stop future shoots from happening, when they clearly did not.

All of this is important because it meant HSUS dropped the ball on this issue and didn't do any kind of follow though. This circles back to our request for all the pigeon shoot sites they claimed to have shut down, but he did not provide any of that information. This leave us still deeply concerned that those pigeon shoots are ongoing and there needs to be a real effort made to make sure they are shut down, an effort that HSUS is not capable of doing.